


Universe in Shadows

by Rosamund_Calais



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst and Romance, Angst with a Happy Ending, At least I hope the ending it’s happy when I get there, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Dyad (Star Wars), If you cheered when they kissed this one’s for you, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Romance, Sounds like a lot of characters but mostly Rey, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:49:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28389558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosamund_Calais/pseuds/Rosamund_Calais
Summary: Ben Solo lives on as a Force ghost, a shadow of himself he’s revealed only to Rey. In the year since the battle on Exogol, Rey has protected what remains of their dyad by keeping far away from her friends and her duty in order to keep Ben secret. But little by little, Ben is fading away. If Rey can’t find a way to tie him to the physical plane, she'll lose her beloved a second time.
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Finn/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [In the Desert, Waiting for Rain](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22025326) by [Skaldic_Jedi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skaldic_Jedi/pseuds/Skaldic_Jedi). 



Rey stares into the darkness that is the bedroom ceiling at midnight, seeing the universe in the shadows. She’d rather be asleep, but the state eludes her; and while she could force herself to focus, to clear her mind, to sleep--somehow it is only in the night that she can let her thoughts roam free.

Ben is beside her on the bed, silent and still. Does the Force shadow of her beloved sleep? She’s never been sure. Maybe he just pretends in order to make her feel more comfortable, or make himself feel more--normal? 

She ought to be content. She has Ben back, and their dyad makes her soul feel complete. But it’s harder than she thought to live with a man that no one else can see or hear. It’s hard to pretend she’s alone when she isn’t. And it’s harder for Ben, who can see so much and do so little.

Rey wouldn’t be happy if she were him. She’d be frustrated. She’d end up bitter.

And she can’t let that happen.

She shifts to look at him. Ambient light catches on the side of his face as perfectly now as when he was alive. But he lays on top of the covers, and makes no indent in the nest of blankets. He can make himself felt, sometimes. When he’s focusing. But it takes a lot of energy, so he doesn’t do it all the time.

She sighs.

At the sound, Ben shifts, turns his head, and his dark eyes slide open. “You should sleep.”

_So should you_ , she wants to say, but doesn’t because she knows it will sound angry, and she isn’t angry at him. She’s angry for him. Angry at Palpatine, still, though the Emperor has been dead--really, truly dead--for months now. But it’s unfair that she is the only one who walked away whole, and only then because Ben chose for her to live, instead of saving himself. 

“I should be a lot of things,” Rey says. “I should be training Jedi. I should be helping Finn.” But with the new government still struggling to come together, it’s not like Finn has time. She rolls onto her side, facing Ben. When she reaches out a hand, she can touch his face, run her fingers through his hair, and feel his hand as he lays it on her arm. When it’s just the two of them like this, their complete dyad, she is so happy. “But how can I take you if I go? What would you do?”

“Haunt you all day?” He says it lightly, his eyes crinkling like the idea amuses him, then leans forward to capture her lips in a soft kiss. 

If he meant to distract her, it doesn’t entirely work. “That would be very boring,” she finally says. “You’d be bored. You’re used to being in command. And you know so many of the old resistance fighters. And what about Finn? He’s Force-sensitive. Maybe he could see you.”

“Maybe,” Ben agrees, his brow furrowing. He clearly hadn’t thought about that. “I don’t know. But I think maybe he could.”

Rey flops back on her pillow. “That would be bad.” Finn is probably the best person she knows, and it’s not even a question how much he would hate knowing that she was tied to the ghost of the man who used to be Kylo Ren. She isn’t sure she could convince him that Ben was a different person. She isn’t sure Ben would let her.

“That would be very bad,” Ben repeats softly, fervently, all humor gone from his voice. She looks over sharply, seeing his face drawn in harsh lines of guilt. He closes his eyes. “I’ll stay here.”

“Alone? For months or years?” She’s spent enough of her life alone enough that the idea doesn’t please her. It makes her heart ache. 

“Alone,” he says. “It’s more than I deserve.”

It isn’t, but there’s no arguing with him when he’s in this sort of mood. In principle, she can’t even disagree. During his years as Kylo Ren, he did unforgivable things. She might have a hard time forgiving if she couldn’t feel his change so keenly, and the raw edge of his guilt. She sighs again and tries to put her hand on his shoulder, but he isn’t solid anymore, not even for her, and her hand brushes through him instead before she pulls it back and tucks it under her side. “We’ll think of something.”

He doesn’t reply. She knows why he feels so deeply, knows why he made the choice he did. He had no way to atone what he’d done. Even if he speaks the words, no one can hear them except her, and if she says, “Ben Solo who used to be Kylo Ren wants me to tell you he’s sorry” no one is going to find that very convincing. Even in a universe where Palpatine could come back from the dead and almost defeat the entire galaxy for a second time in a couple decades, people would be skeptical about her sanity.

She tips her face back toward the dark ceiling and closes her eyes. No, there’s only so much a Force ghost can do. He’d need a body to do more, and that would be--almost--impossible.

#

She had not gathered up the clothing that was all that was left of Ben after he died. It had been in tatters, torn and bloodied, first from their fight on Endor’s moon, then his battle with the Knights of Ren, and then their own showdown with the Emperor. She had left it behind because clothing did not make a man.

Except it might have, if she had even a scrap of the shirt he’d worn so that she could send it to the cloners for DNA recovery. 

“Stupid,” Rey says to herself. As if she could possibly have had the foresight to know, as she sat shocked over the place Ben had fallen, that she would be sending off coded messages to rumored cloners mere months later, asking what they’d really need to grow a clone.

Certainly they would need some type of cell from which to make a culture. And she has nothing, can think of nowhere to find anything. Everything that had been Ben’s as a child had been destroyed by Starkiller base, and everything that had belonged to Ben as an adult had been destroyed in the fall of the First Order. She’d left his clothing behind on Exogal, in a crumbling throne room that had since sunk into the ground. She’d burned his personal TIE fighter before that.

“What happened to your mask?” she asks one day as they are walking back from town. The house the Naboo government loaned her, in perpetuity, comes with a speeder, which she almost never uses. 

“My mask?” Ben’s voice is curious, his brows lifted in query at her out-of-the-blue question.

“Yeah.” She shifts the weight of the bag she’s carrying. “What if someone gets ahold of it, and--uses it somehow, I don’t know, but like you did with Vader’s.”

He looks at her like she’s crazy, and it doesn’t seem like quite a leap. There are no other Skywalkers, no other Palpatines. One of the families that shaped the course of billions of lives ends with her, and the other ended with Ben. She had the First Order’s records searched and wasn’t surprised when the techs eventually turned up the file that Palpatine himself had originated before the destruction of the second Death Star. Emperor Palpatine had only one child, and that child had had only one child--her. She is all that is left. Of both families.

“I don’t think it was in your ship when I burned it,” she continues, ignoring the look he’s giving her. “I think I’d have remembered that. Did you throw your mask into the sea?”

“No,” he says. He steps in front of her, causing her to stop abruptly even though she might well walk through him. “Rey, it wouldn’t make you happier to have that mask. It’s not who I am. Not now.”

“I know.” She gives him a smile she hopes offers reassurance that she isn’t that kind of crazy. “I just want to make sure it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. You weren’t wearing it when we fought on the Death Star. Did you leave it on the Star Destroyer?”

“No. I took it off in the throne room. I didn’t want to face you through it. I wanted to convince you, not fight you.”

She nods. “Good. No one’s likely to have found it there.” Jannah and her former stormtroopers had been the only local residents with any connection to the First Order, and even if someone else did go there on a lark or a treasure hunt, the structure would take weeks or months to explore. She remembers dozens of sets of stormtrooper armor inside the destroyed station, still laying undisturbed after twenty years. She beams at Ben, feeling the warm touch of destiny tugging at her Jedi senses. Of all the places he could have left his mask, he has somehow left it in a place where it can wait, unharmed, until she comes to get it.

It’s almost as if fate is waiting for her to catch up with it.


	2. Chapter 2

Cloning is surprisingly affordable when one is a hero nominally in charge of all the Jedi in the universe, which is just her, really, with a spot holding for Finn. The new government has gotten itself together enough to have a budget, and the part of the budget related to Jedi training and supplies is Rey's to spend. 

Leia taught her it’s also someone else’s budget to audit, so she has to fudge the records a little. Still, the down payment on a clone doesn’t cost much more than a single kyber crystal, and she manages to get the contract signed without Ben being any the wiser. 

They’re just done training together the next morning when she announces she’s leaving. “I need to check in on Finn. Face to face.”

Ben is frozen, his expression surprised and unhappy. The stick he was practicing with has disappeared. “You think there’s something wrong?”

“No. Maybe.” She shrugs off the question, uncomfortable because it’s a lie. She isn’t even going to Coruscant. “I don’t know, but it’s been a long time and he’s too damn busy to come here.” She reaches up to touch Ben’s cheek, hoping he can see how conflicted she is. He’s half-solid this morning, and she can almost feel warmth where his skin is. “I don’t want to leave you but…”

“You have duties.” Ben makes it sound so reasonable. He’s putting up a good front for her. He raises his own hand, sandwiching her palm against his check. He’s solid more often than he used to be, and it doesn’t seem to take as much effort. Maybe she should forget this whole clone idea. If she just waits, maybe he’ll materialize a body of his own without her risky, reckless plan.

After a moment he lets his hand drop, taking a half step back. The smile he puts on his face is lopsided, a twist that isn’t quite bitterness but will be, if she doesn't succeed. “You have duties and you have friends. I’m keeping you from both.”

“You’re not. We’d figure something out if I was really needed.” She has figured it out, she wants to tell him. He just has to wait a little bit longer. It only takes a few months to grow a clone once the DNA is recovered. But she can’t let him catch even a hint of her plan, not yet. She knows too well that he believes he deserves what he is. She has to have the clone ready before he finds out, and she has to find a way to convince him to try bonding with it.

She has no idea how she’ll do that, but first she has to recover that helmet. She can work out the right words to convince him later. “I wish I could take you with me,” Rey says, and it’s true. “But Finn--”

“Yeah,” Ben agrees. “He might notice me. And it’ll be a lot better if he doesn’t.”

Rey swallows a lump and nods. 

“It’s fine,” Ben says, sounding half-convinced. “I’m used to being alone with my own thoughts. They’re pretty interesting, actually.”

“Yeah?” Her amusement is genuine this time but it doesn’t last long. “Just make me a promise, will you?”

“What’s that?” His eyes are steady on hers. He’d promise her the moon, if she asked, because they’re a dyad, and he’d do anything he could for her, just like she will for him. 

She’s going to make him whole again. She smiles. “Don’t haunt anyone else while I’m away.”

“I can’t even give a few nightmares to that jerk who yelled at you for taking a shortcut through his fields?”

Rey rolls her eyes, afraid he might actually be serious. It’s her fault for putting the idea in his head right before she leaves him here to entertain himself for a few weeks. “Fine, maybe him, but just one time.”

#

The shattered shell of the second Death Star pokes up from the restless gray sea below her, its broken spines and missing panels leaving no obvious landing space for her x-wing. The outer shelf where she fought Ben, and where he parked his own fighter, looks even more precarious than it did a year ago, and she’s afraid it won’t support the weight of her ship at the angle it’s now leaning. 

Yes, x-wings are waterproof, and yes, she could pull the fighter up from the ocean if it sank. But she’s already had one ride across the galaxy in a soggy x-wing, and she’s not sure she’d like to try it again, especially when she doesn’t have a mech droid around to help with any necessary repairs.

When she does a quick pass over the camp where Jannah and her stormtroopers lived, the place is empty. Lush greenery is already reclaiming the spaces like the ocean is attempting to reclaim the hulk of the Death Star. Some of the animals the stormtroopers once raised roam the plain in between the camp and the ocean, scattering when she passes back over. A year is enough time that they’ve raised a new generation that doesn’t remember humanoids and their ships.

She lands on the Death Star after all, on a small, flattish section near the throne room. It is just as precarious as the outer shelves and smaller, too. But if she’s going to have to use the Force to get her fighter back out of the ocean either way, at least she can save herself a long hike and start out where she’s going.

The ship doesn’t fall off when she gets out. She can’t help but take that as a good sign for her mission, as if this bit of fortune means she will hop down through the broken throne room window, find the mask lying atop a pile of wreckage nearby, and head directly to the clone factory. 

Still, she seals the x-wing’s pilot canopy up tight before she approaches the window.

She loops her satchel over her head and snugs it tight against her torso before she slithers through a hole where a window panel used to be. Dropping down, she uses the Force to slow her fall so she doesn’t roll her ankle on the piles of debris that litter the sloping floor. The broken bars of the window cast a web of shadows across the room, and between the shadows and the darkness and the fact that everything that originally existed in the room was black, it’s like climbing into a creepy, haunted cave. 

After a few minutes poking into the shadows, Rey’s sorry Ben isn’t what’s haunting the place, because he might remember where he tossed the mask. She didn’t ask enough questions. It’s not under the crumbling throne, or hidden among the bits of metal and glass and wall paneling around the edges of the room. It’s not beyond the door, or in the hallway. 

Away from the throne, the floor is cracked, and there are missing floor panels and bent railing and crushed pieces of things that have fallen from the walls and ceiling. Below lie a hundred other decks and a million routes to the water.

Ben’s mask could have fallen into any of those places when he threw it, and if so, she will never find it. But she still has to try. It isn’t in her nature to do anything less.

She stands at the railing overlooking a wide shaft that ends in a ink-black pool of water far below and stretches her senses. The mask was a part of Ben for years, surely it has some of his resonance, and she has access to that through their dyad. Or at least she might. Doubt slips through her, disrupting her focus, gnawing at her hopes and leaving a sinking feeling in her belly that’s as deep as the dark hole below her.

Ben is the other half of her, but he isn't Kylo Ren. Kylo Ren died on the Death Star, like his grandfather before him, like her hopes of cloning his body.

She doesn't find the mask.


	3. Chapter 3

It’s tempting to fall into the old thought patterns from her scavenging days. The only things Rey could control on Jakku were her thoughts and actions, so it was easy to tell herself that her actions controlled how the world reacted to her. The x-wing fighter still sits precariously balanced on the Death Star’s hull above the throne room, and that is the only bit of luck she’s had. Maybe if she’d let it fall into the sea, she’d have had luck enough to find the mask instead. 

It’s all nonsense, but like a burr in her boot, it plagues her all the way to Coruscant.

She doesn’t even have to ask permission to approach the capitol; the landing drones swoop to meet her before she can announce herself and lead her to a platform near the assembly building where she’s supposed to land.

C3PO is there to greet her, all shiny and full of cheer. “Mistress Rey,” he says, shuffling up to her and giving her his odd little bow. “It is good to see you. And if I may say so, you’re looking very good.”

“Am I?” she asks, skeptical. She’s been in the x-wing for days, with only a few breaks. She’s stiff and tired and her neck is sore, and she could really use a change of clothes. Shouldn’t a protocol droid know something about dressing for the occasion? 

Not that she’s ever worried all that much about her clothing before. 

“I’m going to need some place to stay,” she says, interrupting 3PO’s attempts to walk back his excessive optimism.

“I’ll make the appropriate arrangements for you, mistress.” C3PO waves his arm toward the building. “Master Finn is waiting for you. Perhaps you’d like to see him first?”

She does yet she dreads the idea. If Finn has been doing the exercises she taught him, he’ll have grown in the Force since she left for first Tatooine, then Naboo. Maybe he’s grown enough to see the dark lies cluttering up her heart. She comes to a stop in the hallway, her breath catching. Every truth left unsaid isn’t a path to the dark side, but she’s a little past merely keeping her truths to herself. She’s used Jedi funding to contract a clone, and she’s lied to Ben about her intentions. And she’s going to lie to Finn, too, because she can’t possibly explain herself without sounding crazy, or revealing that Ben lives as a Force ghost. And that she loves the man the rest of the universe can see only as their enemy. 

What if Finn senses the darkness of her lies in her? 

What if this is all somehow still Palpatine’s plan, and her deep connection to Ben will somehow lead her to become what he wanted all along?

“Mistress Rey?” C-3PO turns back to her, confused that she’s stopped dead in the center of a hallway.

She’s being stupid. The twice-dead emperor is dead for good. He’s not pulling anyone’s strings now. She’s here because it’s the only place she could think of to come. The Star Destroyers that Ben spent time on are gone, but they were only ever temporary housing. Coruscant is where the New Order made its home, same as the governments before it. Rey passes a hand over her face as if it can wipe away her problems and pulls herself together. “I’m sorry, 3PO. I’m just tired. Go on.”

He does, and leads her down several more corridors before they stop. 

Before 3PO can reach the door, it slides open. Finn steps out. “Finally,” he says, giving her a grin that lasts just a moment before it slides into concern. “What’s wrong?”

She wants to hug him. She almost asks how he knows something is wrong, but the answer is obvious when she looks him over. Finn has grown in the Force. Because of course he has. She’s been sending him suggestions and advice--sometimes drawn from her own training under Leia, and sometimes drawn from Ben’s under Luke--and even if she wasn’t focused entirely on Finn, Finn was focused on the exercises.

Before she can tell him anything, or even decide if she wants to, Poe’s there, a grin on his face as he thumps Finn on the shoulder. “You’re right. Here she is.” Poe grabs her in an embrace, the sort of firm, easy gesture of friendship she wouldn’t accept from many people. That many people wouldn’t offer to her, if she’s honest about it.

So that’s one thing she’s honest about. She’s just lying about everything else in her life, basically, plus misappropriating money from the republic. The knowledge of her crimes is like a weight in her stomach, even as she gives Poe a squeeze back and digs herself a deeper hole. “I was just in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop by,” she tells him, mustering up a little bit of a smile. “As one does.”

“As one does,” Finn agrees as Poe steps back, and gives her a more thoughtful hug, holding her with a bit more care than Poe did. 

She’s glad Poe’s there, or else she might have spilled everything to Finn. 

Instead, Finn ushers her carefully into the room, which turns out to be an old Imperial conference chamber that the two of them have turned into an office. “Why not just take an office?” she asks.

“The decor on those things--” Poe shakes his head.

Finn rolls his eyes. “They’re under construction right now. There were a lot of security features--”

“Booby traps,” Poe supplies, plopping himself down in one of the black chairs at the end of the log, gleaming black table. He leans back. “So many booby traps.”

Finn continues as he seats himself in one of the other chairs. “--security features that have to be ripped out from the ground up to make sure they get everything.”

Rey nods. Poe gestures in invitation toward one of the other jagged-backed black chairs. They look uncomfortable, and she’s tired of sitting, but she sits anyway. “You couldn’t get droids to sort it out?”

Poe shakes his head. “We’ve had the best systems architects and codebreakers go through it, plus every Imperial droid we could get our hands on. But there are a couple systems we’ve never been able to fully map, because the core is so old and complicated. Dating back to the old republic.” He shrugs. “Whoever had the keys disappeared, and took their droids, and I don’t want to find out later that they left themselves a backdoor. So it’s all coming out.”

Rey gives a vague agreement, distracted by Poe. He’s relaxed back in the uncomfortable Imperial chair, oblivious to the tension that makes her feel like a bottled-up explosion. One of his hands rests casually on Finn’s shoulder. She traces Poe’s arm with her eyes, noting the way he leans ever-so-slightly toward Finn, and how Finn relaxes fractionally at Poe’s touch. Their bond, so tentative before, is unmistakable now. They are as natural together and she is with Ben. 

It used to frustrate her how they danced around each other, how Poe’s wandering attention hurt Finn. Now they look comfortable, and she ought to be glad they’ve grown into a sort of duo of their own. But jealousy pounds in her veins. She wants to have the same thing for herself: not just the emotions of the bond, but the little comforting touches, the warmth of someone’s skin on her own. The acknowledgement of her other half to her friends.

“Security features and droids aren’t what you came here to talk about, though,” Finn says, cutting straight to the chase. 

Rey blinks away her envy. “I’m overdue for a visit.” She can still build for herself what Finn and Poe have, if she can just find the right bit of DNA. But she doesn’t know Coruscant at all, and she’s out of touch with the people. She’s going to need their help. Rey can’t make herself relax, but she can give him a smile. “And a check-in with my favorite padawan.”

Finn’s mouth turns down on one side but he lets her change the subject. “I’m a little old for that, actually. I checked the records.”

“Whatever,” she agrees. “This isn’t the old Jedi order. It’s a new Jedi order, and we have to start somewhere.” She pauses. “And you know, I think you’ll be a pretty patient teacher when we have some actual padawans.”

Finn raises his brows. 

“I bet you’re good with kids,” she adds, in part because it makes him squirm, and in part because it’s true. “So you and I will do some work tomorrow morning. I’ll set up a training course. It is pretty late here, isn’t it?” She swivels her head but doesn’t see a chrono.

“Late enough,” Poe says, not moving from his chair. He wrinkles his nose at her. “And you look like you’ve been in an x-wing for a couple days, did anybody mention that? I bet you’re overdue for a meal, a stretch, and a shower.”

“I really could use that stretch.” Just thinking about it makes her need to roll her shoulders out. 

Poe and Finn exchange a look, and Poe gets up. “How about a little tour to stretch your legs?”

She almost pops up out of the chair. “Yes. Perfect.” She glances at Finn, who’s still sitting, and raises a brow in question.

“I’d better stay here and clear my schedule for tomorrow,” he says. 

#

Poe takes the long way around the building, which is exactly what she needs. They visit the council chambers, already reconstructed and empty at this time of night. “Sometimes they’re still going on in there even at this hour,” Poe says. “Politicians know how to take twenty words and make them two thousand.”

She was here once before, right after they defeated the Final Order, when they brought in the first councilors. “Tell me about it,” she jokes.

“I would, but we’d be up all night.” He thumbs the pad at the door to lock up the chambers, which appear to have the new security system installed. They take a ramp and some stairs and a lift, and end up at the very top of the tall building, on an open-air balcony with a stunning view of the city. “Best view in Coruscant.”

The council building is slightly taller than its neighbors, so instead of feeling like they’re standing in a canyon of glass walls, it’s more like they’re sailing across a sea of buildings, above the twinkling lights of windows and small craft.

A force field ensures that nothing can fall from the building, and protects them from the winds that whip across the skies at this height, but allows a clear view. Far above, she can see lines and circles of lights where space stations hang in the sky. 

What’s most striking is that it’s exactly as she remembers it in those first days after the Final Order fell. The government has changed, but people still use the same buildings, same flyers, same stations that they did when the First Order controlled this place, and the New Republic before it, and the Empire before that.

So much has changed, and so much hasn’t. The council chamber in this very building is where Palpatine, then just a Senator from Naboo, murdered the Republic and laid the seeds of the Empire.

That thought ought to be chilling, but it isn’t. It’s a comfort to think that her grandfather wasn’t always the horror she’d seen on Exegol. He’d been an ordinary man once, just like Ben’s grandmother, who’d been swept up into extraordinary events.

Then it occurs to her. “When the First Order took over Coruscant, they used this building for living quarters and offices, didn’t they?”

“Mmm-hmm.” Poe is still looking upwards.

“What happened to all the stuff they left behind?”

“They dragged it all down to the archives,” Poe says. 

“We have archives?”

“Every decent civilization has archives,” Poe tells her in a tone equal parts laughter and sarcasm. He shrugs. “At least--that’s what the archivists assure me.”

She’s so filled with sudden hope that it escapes in the form of a laugh. “All right. I want to see it.”

“You--do?”

She nods fervently and adlibs. “Jedi love history stuff. You should’ve seen the old books Luke had on his island. It’s how we get so-- so--”

“Wise?” Poe supplies. His expression is somewhere between laughter and disbelief.

“Exactly. I’ll look tomorrow.” She pauses, remembering. “After I work with Finn.”

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote the first scene for this fic the day "In the Desert, Waiting for Rain" was posted, but I didn't know where it was going and I put it aside for several months. I have 5 chapters completed which I'm planning to post about once a week. I think it might run about 10 chapters, but we'll see.


End file.
